A.Karl Marx

     1.  Hegel - mind progress to complete knowledge through the dialectical process of thesis and synthesis.

     2.  material factors determine events.

     3.  people have an essential nature and clearly defined interests.
(but can be deceived by a social system that favors the interests of others)

     4.  history and contemporary society can be understood in terms of conflicts between different social groups (class)

     5.  link between ideas (ideologies) and interests.

     6.  primacy of technology and patterns of property ownership (economy)

     7.  evolutionary nature of social development (modernization road to perfectionism)

   <>  Conflict Theory and Critique of Society

     1.  Common points: society as divided hierarchically into exclusive groups.

     2. possibility of an ideal social order.

     3.  Use social science to criticize society

     4. Frankfort School: social scientists can not separate work from moral commitments; are a force for change and progress; are not separated from the society that produced them; focus on the distribution of wealth, status and power in a society (small elite, large exploited mass); uni-causal theory of social structure.

 H.  Marxist and Neo-Marxist Sociology

     1.  Economic Basis of Society - economic factors a fundamental determinant of social structure.
         a.  material forces of production - methods by which people make a living (economic production)
         b. relations of production - property rights (social organization)
         c.  forms of social consciousness (shared beliefs)

     2. Class and the Economic Base of Conflict
         a.  class struggle - inherent group conflict based on place in economy
         b. property and class- relationship to property determines class: workers are paid for their labor regardless of the type of work, capitalists and landlords own instruments of production, slaves own no property at all. Incompatible interests
         c.  economic theory of value - labor theory of value - surplus value (created above the needs of producing labor)
         d. class conflict - defines the essential character of a society
         e. class consciousness - recognize common interests
         f. class and patriarchy - women as oppressed, inherited property

     3.  Culture, Ideology and Alienation
         a.  ideology - purpose to legitimate position of those already in control, e.g. religion
         b. alienation - class society, exploitation would lead to separate people from themselves.
         c. Erik Olin Wright - American class structure

     4. Class Society and the State - state power an instrument of class rule

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